John P. Kotter's Leading Change

In his book, Leading Change, Dr. John P. Kotter communicates why organizations fail or succeed based on ten years of conducting research on more than 100 companies to see what contributed to their successful transformations and what hindered those transformations. “In October 2001 Business Week magazine reported a survey they conducted of 504 enterprises that rated Professor Kotter the number one “leading guru” in America.” The two significant aspects I took from this book were the reasons why change initiatives fail and an eight-stage process to lead the organization through a successful transformation.
Dr. Kotter listed the following reasons why initiatives fail: allowing too much complacency, failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition, underestimating the power of vision, under-communicating the vision by a factor of 10, permitting obstacles to block the new vision,

failing to create short-term wins, declaring victory too soon and neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture. Complacency and underestimating the power of vision were two key points I have seen throughout my career. Allowing complacency hinders the ability to create a sense of urgency of the organization to take seriously the changes that need to take place. Complacency is something so many of us tend to gravitate towards because we typically believe if it is not broke, do not fix it. The second point, not clearly stating the vision is something many leaders fail to communicate to the lowest level, which causes the implementation of the reform to fail due to lack of understanding. The Army has seen many initiatives fail over the years. Leaders must take note from these reasons so they can understand the importance of their role in leading the reform, not just manage it.
The eight-stage process, which ties to the reasons for failure is as follows: establish a sense of urgency, create the guiding coalition, develop a vision and strategy, communicate the change vision, empower employees for broad-based action, generate short-term wins, consolidate gains and produce more change, anchor new approaches in the culture. The process was well organized and clearly articulated. Dr. Kotter stated the importance of completing the steps in order. It is possible to be in multiple stages at once, but it is imperative not to overlook any one stage before moving forward. Today's Army is going through restructuring to reduce our end strength to 420,000 Soldiers. Although the senior leaders have created a sense of urgency, it is very unclear how well we will function as our smallest force in over 70 years. I believe mixed messages are being communicated about the strategy for us to maintain the same optempo with far fewer personnel.
Additionally, consolidating gains and producing more change can limit complacency as we celebrate short-term wins.

Dr. Kotter emphasizes this stage is fragile and calls for more dedicated leadership to continue pushing the change vision. It is at this stage to remove unnecessary interdependencies to make way for the transformation to take hold. The Army fell victim to this phase when senior leadership claimed victory too early in the Iraq war and failed to provide a proper vision for the way ahead that resulted in an insurgency.
There are many excellent takeaways that Army leaders at all levels of war can implement when making a change. Lessons learned by many companies were thoroughly discussed and clearly highlights the pitfalls and traps leaders fall victim to when making a transformation. Therefore, Leading Change is a must read for military professionals because there are two critical tools that all leaders need to put into their kit bag, the eight reasons why change initiative fail and the eight-stage process to lead the organization through successful

change.